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A little ride around Tirimbina Garden a glance to our avifauna

(you just need to know what they like)

by Cristhian Ureña

Tirimbina Garden has a new resident, a little charm for bird lovers, is a very small specie and difficult to find, due this little guy likes to visit flowers on trees very high up on the canopy and many of the cases is unnoticed, so represents a challenge to find it, but a great satisfaction when you achieve it; is the hummingbird: Black Crested Coquette. In Tirimbina garden there is a particular situation, because it always visits the Porterweed flower (Sthachitarpeta frantzi) a plant that doesn’t grow more than 2 meters (6 feet) and has their favorite flower, this hummingbird of 8cm arrived to settle down in this garden and already nested during the past two years, closer to the food resource, which is this flower, this prove that this is a good habitat to stay and that the garden is a good shelter for this specie and also for many others.

Since a couple of years ago in the Tirimbina Garden have been changed its plants and trees for native groups of plants with the purpose to attract more species of animals like birds, it had achievement a great result with this changed; for example: now is possible to see more species of birds than some years ago, before was harder the observation of avifauna, because the garden didn`t have the right plants that birds wanted, but with de availability of food and habitat that the garden has now for the inhabitants make this place one of the best spots to see birds inside of the reserve.

The diversity of plants in this garden is exquisite which has the ability to attract birds as Slaty Tailed Trogon (Trogon massena), Violaceus Trogon (Trogon violaceus) these birds are cousins of the Quetzal and as their cousin they have a beautiful coloration, 16 different species of hummingbirds like Scaly Brested Hummingbird (Phaeochroa cuvierii) that its distribution in the Caribbean is more limited and more rare than in the Pacific side, flycatchers can`t missed in the garden with their aggressive way to search food and defend their territory, about 9 different kinds of parrots and parakeets that in flocks find trees to eat and rest, as well tangaras; a very colorful group like Passerine’s Tanager a common bird in the garden that male exposes its rump with a color between red and orange that deserve to be observe, we can`t forget our national bird Clay Colored Robin (Turdus Grayi) although is not a colorful bird the male sings striking melodies during the breeding season.

All this abundance of birds in the garden came to support the ecotourism area with the birding tours and natural history walks which now are more entertaining because a lot of birds of different colors gather in the garden, this takes the attention not only of bird lovers also from other people that maybe never had interest in this group before, but here they appreciate them more. The place permits the research of this group too, like the Nest project shows the birds build nest in bushes, plants and trees in different points of the garden and forest, the research is about the measurement of reproductive success of the birds in the reserve, that is lead for the Ornithology Julio Sanchez. In the migration season that normally happens in moths of September, October March and April, visitors from North America and South America join to the party like raptors, flycatchers, warblers, vireos and thrushes, many of them escaping away from the cold winter, this area is beside a good point to see migrant raptors that every year cross the sky like Plumbeous kite (Ictinia plúmbea) Swainson`s Hawk (Buteo swainsoni) and Osprey (Pandion haeliaetus), it is possible to observe hundreds of hawks in this season.

In this garden just for this floristic reserved we can get delighted of the colors of Heliconias, Bromelias and Marantas, tropical plants that decorate the trails and enjoy of this wonderful scenery while hummingbird visit this flowers. In one morning in the garden you can see about 50 species of birds in a tour the last three hours and not only birds, here live other groups of animals as nectar and fruit eating bats, butterflies, frogs like Blue Jeans Frog that is fairly common, also iguanas and sloths, there is a mixed of several groups of animals that allows a look to the biodiversity of the Tropical Rain Forest.

In this land we have been doted for a great grace, that we should be proud to be even part of it, a beautiful biological diversity full of colors and forms that we can appreciated in each detail of a flower or the precisely design of a leaf in order to adjust to the circumstances of the Tropical Rain Forest, perhaps we can see in these wonderful creatures flying with great precision, the several colors and adaptations for survivor day by day in the defiance forest, Hummingbirds, Trogons, Toucans, Motmots, all of them show us how beautiful is to be here and a reason to keep protecting the forest.